ON ST. ALYPIUS, BISHOP OF TAGASTE
IN AFRICA,
ABOUT THE YEAR CDXXX.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Alypius, bishop of Tagaste in Africa (S.)
BY P. B.
§ I. His modern cult; St. Augustine the writer of his deeds.
Although we are wholly unable to demonstrate, from any monuments of this our Museum, whether Greek or Latin, whether already published in print or existing only in manuscript, that a public and ancient veneration of St. Alipius, or rather Alypius, after his death ever flourished anywhere in the Church, The Saint is announced on this day in the Roman Martyrology, we have nevertheless by no means thought it fair that the memory of one should here be passed over in silence whose cult the Church not only tolerates at present, but even fosters and extends by lawful authority. For first, Pope Gregory XIII, from the year 1584, commanded that this eulogy of the same prelate should be recited yearly and publicly in choir throughout all churches, out of the newly reformed Roman Martyrology, on this day, the XVIII of the Kalends of September: At Tagaste in Africa, of St. Alipius the bishop, who was formerly the disciple of Augustine, afterwards his companion in conversion, his colleague in the pastoral office, his fellow soldier and strenuous in the contests against the heretics, and at last his partner in heavenly glory. That this announcement had not been customary before is indicated both by the preceding Martyrologies, absolutely all of which lack it, and by Baronius in the notes upon the same passage, inasmuch as he cites no Martyrologist — contrary to what he is everywhere accustomed to do — who had gone before him in it.
[2] Next, the Canons Regular of St. Augustine of the Lateran congregation began from the year 1634 to honor the same with a double feast, by a proper Office, on the XVI day of August; and he is honored among the Canons Regular of St. Augustine as is evident from their proper Offices printed at Venice in the same year: and this, so far as appears, by no other authority than that of St. Pius V, whose privileges granted to their congregation and Order in the year 1570 they prefix in the same place. For inasmuch as the holy Pontiff had there granted them in general, besides the feasts of the Saints expressly named, That they might be able to celebrate under a double Office the feasts also of all the other Saints of the said congregation and Order, and to accommodate to all and each of them their own and authentic lessons, etc. — this, I say, they interpreted particularly of Sts. Alypius, Possidius, and others whom they reckon as their own, and whose double feasts accordingly, with proper Offices, they published in print in the year 1634 as to be celebrated; not only with no one objecting, but with the other congregations of the same Order everywhere presently following the same example in emulation, although not everywhere on the same day. Indeed, when by the same privilege — although given before the sacred Congregation of Rites was established at Rome — the Canons Regular had extended their proper feasts and new Offices to still other and far more Saints in Germany, the Provost and convent of the monastery of the Holy Cross at Augsburg, of the province of Mainz, of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, petitioned the sacred Congregation of Rites that it would deign to impart to them the faculty of reciting the Offices of the Saints of the Order of St. Augustine; the sacred Congregation replied that it HAD BEEN LAWFUL and is lawful for the petitioners to recite Offices of this kind, provided they be Regulars of the same Order. On the XI day of September, MDCLX. So the Proper of the Windesheim congregation, printed at Brussels in the year 1678.
[3] Last of all there came in the whole Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, with the most ample faculty of the Sovereign Pontiff; and his whole Order of Hermits. which in the prolegomena to its proper Offices published at Antwerp in the year 1674 has these words particularly concerning the feast of St. Alypius: Pope Clement X, upon the representation of Joseph Eusanius, of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, bishop of Helenopolis and Prefect of the Apostolic Sacristy, confirmed three decrees which had issued from the sacred Congregation of Rites at the prayers of the same bishop: by the first of which, given on the XVIII day of July MDCLXXI, it is granted that all Religious of either sex of the said Order may recite on the XVI day of August, under a double rite, the Office of St. Alipius, bishop of Tagaste, of the same Order, commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the XV day of August, from the Common of confessor bishops, with proper collect and lessons, to be taken by those deputed for the correction of the Offices of the said Order from the Works of St. Augustine, and to be inserted in the Kalendar of the Breviary and Missal of the aforesaid Order. From this it appears how far and wide the cult of our Alypius has already spread itself. Now we proceed to the Acts, or rather to their writer.
[4] What manner of man and how great St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, was, The history of the living Alypius, desired by St. Paulinus, has been fully shown of set purpose in this Work on the day on which he is celebrated in the Church, the XXII of the month of June. Now, what an exceptional opinion he had already at that time conceived of the virtues and holiness of Alypius, then very recently raised to the bishopric of Tagaste, he shows clearly in his letter to him given at that same time, that is in the year of Christ 394, which among the Paulinian letters of the most recent Paris edition of the year 1685 is the third, otherwise the forty-fifth; but among the Augustinian ones, in the Benedictines of St. Maur, volume 2, the twenty-fourth letter, otherwise the thirty-fifth. In it the most holy prelate not only extols the virtues of Alypius wonderfully, but also judges them most worthy of history, in these words: But this I ask of you particularly, since you have filled me, undeserving and unexpecting, with a great love of yourself: that in return for this history of the times (the Chronicle of Eusebius, which along with this letter he was sending into Africa to Alypius) you would relate to me the whole history of your holiness; that you may set forth of what family you are, from what home you were called by the Lord to so great a thing, by what beginnings you were set apart from your mother's womb, and passed over, renouncing the stock of flesh and blood, to the mother of the sons of God who rejoices in her offspring, and were translated into a royal and priestly race.
[5] St. Augustine wrote — first separately and continuously, This judgment and desire of Paulinus St. Augustine so far approved that he took the execution of it upon himself; for thus he writes in letter 27, otherwise 32, about the beginning of the year 395, commending to St. Paulinus a certain Romanianus, a kinsman of Alypius: There is also another reason why you should love that brother the more: for he is the kinsman of the venerable and truly blessed bishop Alypius, whom you embrace with your whole heart, and deservedly: for whoever thinks kindly of that man thinks of the great mercy of God and of the wonderful gifts of God. And so, when he had read your request in which you signified that you desired him to write his own history to you, he both wished to do it, on account of your good will, and did not wish to, on account of his modesty: and when I saw him wavering between love and shame, I transferred the burden from him to my own shoulders: for this too he charged upon me by letter. Quickly therefore, if the Lord will help me, I shall insert the whole Alypius into your heart: for this I greatly feared, that he would be afraid to disclose all the things which the Lord has conferred upon him, lest to some less intelligent reader (for they would not be read by you alone) he might seem to be preaching not the divine gifts granted to men, but himself; and you, who know how to read such things, on account of guarding against the weakness of others, would be defrauded of what is due to brotherly acquaintance. And this I should have done already, and you would already be reading him, had not the brother's (Romanianus's) unforeseen departure been suddenly resolved on — whom I thus commend, etc. Nor can it be doubted that Augustine quickly performed what he here pledges himself quickly to do, even though that little work seems long since to have perished.
[6] then scattered through various works; which we shall here collect, There is one who has thought that this passage of St. Augustine is to be understood not of any separate history of St. Alypius, but of that which is read even now in the books of the Confessions. The opinion does not please us: first, because here a history is promised to be sent quickly, whereas the books of the Confessions were written a full five years later; next, because the whole Alypius is promised, that is, a narrative of his deeds down to the year 395, embracing certainly his promotion to the mitre of Tagaste, which St. Paulinus had particularly asked for: but in the books of the Confessions this is not touched upon, and the history ends with the baptism of Alypius. But now it is certain enough that whatever can now be said of the life of this prelate is chiefly to be gathered from the various works of St. Augustine still preserved. And this was done long ago by that most distinguished man, exceedingly versed in Augustine, Innocent Keferloher, Canon Regular, dean of the abbey of Diessen in Bavaria; a not unlike collection of whose Acts of St. Possidius, bishop of Calama, our predecessors gave on the XVII day of May from page
29, they even then determining upon this month and day for the collection of the same deeds of Alypius, which was at that time most kindly forwarded hither along with it. But, since others have now undertaken that same work, that lucubration of Keferloher seemed to us neither sufficiently ordered nor sufficiently complete, so that it is better to present a new one, which we now undertake, taking our beginning from his birth.
§ II. The noble birth of Alypius; his studies in youth at Tagaste, Carthage, and Rome.
The noble birth of Alypius after the year of Christ 354: Alypius (says St. Augustine, Confessions, book 6, chapter 7) was sprung from the same township as I, his parents being of the chief men of the town, and he was younger than I in years. He was born, therefore, in the Numidian town of Tagaste; for Possidius in his Life, chapter 1, makes this the birthplace of Augustine also; and indeed after the year of Christ 354, inasmuch as he was younger than Augustine, who came into the light in November of that year. That he was not much younger we shall easily gather below, both from the time at which he discharged the office of assessor at Rome and from the year in which he was afterwards consecrated bishop; especially because he had always to maintain a gravity befitting public ministries almost by age alone and by a steady maturity of character: for the bulk of his body could contribute nothing at all to it, unless perhaps to diminish it; since Augustine plainly signifies that in the year of Christ 386 he was of tiny stature, in the book On the Happy Life, number 15, in these words: As though indeed, said I, we were seeking something long, especially against Alypius: for he would argue from his own body that these small things are not moderately strong and useful.
[8] From his birth St. Augustine, in the place cited above, passing to the age now fit for the liberal disciplines, his studies of grammar and rhetoric under Augustine, commends his excellent and lovable natural disposition, and teaches with what studies he rightly cultivated it from about the year of Christ 375, and with what he wrongly delighted himself: For he had studied, he says, under me, when I began to teach in our own town, and afterwards at Carthage (here Augustine taught rhetoric, at Tagaste grammar, as Possidius testifies, chapter 1); and he loved me much, because I seemed to him good and learned; and I loved him, because of the great native disposition to virtue which was sufficiently eminent in one of no great age. Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian manners, in which frivolous shows are ardently followed, had swallowed him up into the madness of the Circus. But while he was being miserably rolled about in this, and I meanwhile, professing rhetoric there, was conducting a public school, he did not yet hear me as his master, on account of a certain quarrel which had arisen between me and his father; and I had learned that he loved the circus destructively, and I was gravely distressed, because he seemed to me about to lose, or even to have lost, so great a hope. But there was no opportunity of warning him and recalling him by some restraint, either by the good will of friendship or by the right of a master: for I supposed that he thought of me as his father did; but he was not so. And so, setting aside his father's will in this matter, he had begun to greet me, coming into my lecture room and hearing something and going away.
[9] But indeed it had slipped from my memory to deal with him, lest by a blind and headlong zeal for empty games he should destroy so good a mind. But in truth, O Lord, who drew the youth away from the Circus but attracted him to the Manichees, you who preside over the helms of all things which you have created, had not forgotten that he would be among your sons a steward of your mystery; and, that his correction might openly be ascribed to you, you wrought it indeed through me, but through me unknowing. For on a certain day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place and my disciples were present before me, he came, greeted me, sat down, and bent his mind upon the things that were being done: and it happened that a lesson was in hand, which, while I was expounding it, and a comparison drawn from the Circus seemed to me fitly to be employed, so that what I was insinuating might be made both more pleasant and plainer, with a biting mockery of those whom that madness had made captive — you know, our God, that I did not then think of healing Alypius of that plague. But he took it to himself, and believed that I had said it only for his sake: and what another would have taken as ground for being angry with me, that honorable young man took as ground for being angry with himself and for loving me the more ardently … For after those words he tore himself out of that pit so deep, into which he was willingly sinking and by which with a wretched pleasure he was blinded, and he shook his mind with a strong self-restraint, and all the filth of the Circus leapt away from him, nor did he go there any more. And beginning to hear me again, he was involved with me in that superstition, loving in the Manichees the display of continence, which he supposed to be true and genuine. But it was a senseless and seductive thing, catching precious souls which did not yet know how to touch the height of virtue, and easily deceived by the surface — the surface, however, of a shadowed and feigned virtue.
[10] At Rome, relapsing into the shows through curiosity and self-confidence, Not indeed forsaking the earthly path charmed upon him by his parents, he had gone before me to Rome to learn law; and there he was snatched away by an incredible eagerness for the gladiatorial show, and incredibly. For while he abhorred and detested such things, certain friends and fellow students of his, when he happened to meet them as they were returning from a meal, led him, vehemently refusing and resisting, with a friendly violence into the amphitheatre on the days of those cruel and deadly games, while he said: "If you drag my body into that place, and set me there, can you also turn my mind and my eyes upon those spectacles? I shall therefore be present and absent, and so I shall overcome both you and them." Having heard this, they nonetheless brought him along with them, desiring perhaps to test this very thing, whether he could accomplish it. When they had come there, and had taken such seats as they could, everything was seething with the most savage pleasures. He, closing the doors of his eyes, forbade his mind to go forward into such great evils. And would that he had stopped his ears also!
[11] the divine mercy restored him; For at a certain turn of the fight, when a mighty shout of the whole people had struck him violently, overcome by curiosity, and as it were prepared, whatever it might be, to despise and conquer even the sight of it, he opened his eyes, and was smitten with a graver wound in his soul than the man whom he desired to behold was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he at whose fall the shout arose, which entered through his ears and unbarred his eyes; that there might be that whereby a mind still rather bold than brave should be struck and cast down — and the weaker in that it had presumed upon itself, which ought to have presumed upon you (the Saint is addressing God). For as soon as he saw that blood, he drank in savagery at the same time, and did not turn away, but fixed his gaze, and was drinking in furies, and knew it not, and was delighted with the wickedness of the contest, and was made drunk with a bloody pleasure. And he was no longer the man who had come, but one of the crowd to which he had come, and a true comrade of those by whom he had been brought. What more? He looked, he shouted, he burned, he carried away with him thence a madness by which he was goaded to return, not only with those by whom he had first been drawn away, but even before them, and drawing others too. And yet from thence you rescued him with a most strong and most merciful hand, and taught him to place his confidence not in himself but in you; but long afterwards.
[12] Nevertheless this was even now being stored up in his memory for a future medicine. just as also on another occasion his ill-considered curiosity For there was also that other matter: that while he was still a student, already hearing me at Carthage, and was thinking at midday in the forum upon what he was to recite, as scholars are wont to practice, you allowed him to be seized by the keepers of the forum as a thief. I think you permitted this, our God, for no other reason than that he, who was to be so great a man, might already begin to learn how not easily, in the discerning of cases, one man is to be condemned by another out of rash credulity. For he was walking alone before the tribunal with his tablets and stylus, when, behold, a certain young man of the number of the scholars, a true thief, secretly bringing an axe, he not perceiving it, entered to the leaden gratings which overhang the silversmiths' street, and began to cut off the lead. But the sound of the axe being heard, the silversmiths who were beneath murmured, and sent men to seize whomever they might chance to find. And hearing their voices, that man left his tool and departed, fearing to be caught with it. But Alypius, who had not seen him go in, perceived him going out, and quickly saw him departing. And desiring to know the reason, he entered the place, and standing there and wondering, was considering the axe he had found. When, behold, those who had been sent find him alone, holding the iron by whose sound they had been roused and had come. They seize him, they drag him along; and gathering the tenants of the forum, they boast that they have caught a manifest thief; and thence he was being led away to be presented to the judge.
[13] But thus far only was he to be taught. For at once, O Lord, had delivered him at Carthage when he was on the very brink of punishment. you came to the help of an innocence of which he alone was witness. For as he was being led either to prison or to punishment, there met them a certain architect who had the chief charge of the public buildings. They rejoice that they had fallen in with him above all, as the man to whom they were accustomed to come under suspicion of stolen goods that had disappeared from the forum; so that at last, as it were, he might learn by whom these things were done. But in truth the man had often seen Alypius in the house of a certain senator, to whom he used to go to pay his respects; and recognizing him at once, he took him by the hand and drew him aside from the crowds; and inquiring the cause of so great an evil, he heard what had been done; and he bade all the rioters who were present, roaring out threats, to come with him. And they came to the house of that young man who had committed the deed. Now there was a boy before the door, and he was so small that, fearing nothing on that account for his master, he could easily disclose the whole: for he had been with him in the forum as his attendant. When Alypius recalled him, he made it known to the architect. And he showed the axe to the boy, asking him whose it was. And the boy said at once, "Ours"; then, being questioned, he laid open the rest. Thus the case was transferred to that house, and the crowds who had already begun to triumph over him were confounded, and he who was to be a steward of your word, and an examiner of many causes in your Church, departed more experienced and better instructed.
§ III. His deeds up to the baptism received at Milan.
He departs from Rome to Milan in the year 384 with Augustine, For the rest, Alypius spent long labor at Rome in mastering the laws of jurisprudence; since, when Augustine came thither about the year of Christ 383, or at any rate before Alypius departed thence with him in the following year, when Augustine was called to profess rhetoric at Milan, he had already more than once sat there as counsellor in grave and public causes, and even to a most exalted magistrate, namely the Count of the Italian or Italician largesses, who presided over the making of largesses in Italy, where he saw to the payment of the stipends to soldiers and others. But let us hear Augustine himself upon these matters, attending meanwhile at the same time (as we have before advised) whether from
the thirtieth year of his age, which St. Augustine had begun to enter upon from the XIII day of November of the year 383, our Saint could then have been far distant. Thus, then, Augustine in Confessions, book 6, chapter 10, concerning his own St. Alypius: Him therefore I had found at Rome, and he clung to me with a most strong bond, and set out with me to Milan, both that he might not forsake me and that he might do something with the law which he had learned, rather according to his parents' wish than his own. And thrice already had he sat as assessor with a wonderful continence, at which the others rather wondered, while he wondered the more at those who preferred gold to innocence.
[15] where he had discharged the office of counsellor incorruptly: His character was tried also, not only by the enticement of covetousness, but likewise by the goad of fear. At Rome he was assessor to the Count of the Italician largesses. There was at that time a certain most powerful senator, to whose benefits many were bound and to whose terror many were subject. He wished to be allowed some point or other, after the manner of his power, which was unlawful by the laws. Alypius resisted: a reward was promised: he laughed at it in his mind: threats were held out: he trod them under foot, while all wondered at so unusual a soul, which neither desired as a friend nor feared as an enemy so great a man, one celebrated by immense fame for innumerable ways of conferring benefit and of doing harm. But the judge himself, to whom he was counsellor, although he too was unwilling that it should be done, yet did not openly refuse; but transferring the case to him, asserted that he was not permitted by him; because in truth, if he himself did it, the other would withdraw. By this one thing only had he already been almost enticed — his literary zeal — namely that he might have copies made for himself at the praetorian rates; but consulting justice, he turned his deliberation to the better part, judging the equity by which he was forbidden more profitable than the power by which he was allowed. This is a small thing; but he who is faithful in a small thing is faithful also in a great … Such was he who then clung to me, and wavered with me in counsel as to what manner of life was to be held.
[16] here Augustine wonders at his chastity: When they were now at Milan, and were conferring about the choice of a manner of life, Augustine wondered no less at the chastity of Alypius there than he had looked up to his justice at Rome: for when he was inclining rather vehemently to the married state, as he himself relates concerning himself in Confessions, book 6, chapter 12, Alypius indeed forbade me, he says, to take a wife, alleging that we could in no way live together in secure leisure in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired, if I did so. For he himself was even then most chaste in that matter, so that it was wonderful; since he had made trial of intercourse at the entrance of his youth, but had not stuck fast in it, and had rather grieved over it and despised it; and thereafter he was living most continently. But I resisted him with the examples of those who, being married, had cultivated wisdom, and had merited God's favor, and had had friends faithfully and loved them. Although indeed, as is explained in the same place, when the same matter was often debated, Alypius, repeatedly wondering at Augustine's weakness and his obstinate aversion from celibacy and his defense of matrimony as though it were necessary, at last gave his hand to his friend — nay, to the serpent flattering by his friend's tongue — and himself began to desire marriage; yet by no means did he do this as one overcome by lust for such pleasure, but by curiosity: for he said that he desired to know what that thing was, without which my life, which so pleased him, would seem to me not a life but a punishment. But neither did he long cherish even that desire, such as it was, as Augustine testifies in the same place: So were we, until you, Most High, not deserting our clay, having pity upon the wretched, came to our aid in wonderful and hidden ways.
[17] Now if that character of his, so greatly given to virtue, here also with Augustine himself he becomes a catechumen, and of itself so alien from any wish for wedlock, could be led by his friend's words and example even to the desire of matrimony, it can hardly be doubted that in all other matters which properly pertained to virtue he accommodated himself far more readily and willingly to the same man's example; and especially at Milan, where they lived together, until a third joined them, Nebridius, who, leaving his native country near Carthage …, leaving his father's excellent estate, leaving his home and a mother who would not follow him, had come to Milan for no other cause, says Augustine in Confessions, book 6, chapter 10, than that he might live with me in a most burning zeal for truth and wisdom … an ardent seeker of the blessed life and a most keen examiner of the most difficult questions. There is no doubt, I say, that in that place and time Alypius imitated far more ardently all the honorable pursuits of Augustine, and accordingly gave himself wholly to the seeking of truth and wisdom, went with his Augustine every Lord's day to St. Ambrose rightly handling the word of truth among the people, and by his preaching, being little by little won over along with him, began to incline away from the errors of the Manichees toward the Church and toward the reading of the sacred Scriptures, and at last to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church, until something certain should shine forth by which he might direct his course. All these things, since Augustine confesses them of himself, he most certainly intimates of Alypius; inasmuch as the latter did nothing else at Milan than seize every occasion for inquiring into truth and wisdom, while his companions, Augustine and Nebridius, were compelled to give their attention there to other cares besides; as is asserted in Confessions, book 8, chapter 6. And certainly that he was a catechumen before he gave in his name for baptism, Augustine expressly asserts in the same work, book 9, chapter 4.
[18] One thing meanwhile for a while retarded his course toward the truth, then otherwise so prosperous: and he is converted along with him, namely that Alypius, as Augustine testifies in Confessions, book 7, chapter 19, thought that God clothed in flesh was so believed by Catholics that, besides God and flesh, there was no soul in Christ; and he did not suppose that the mind of man was preached in him: and since he held it well established that the things which are recorded of him could not be done without a living and rational creature, he was moved the more sluggishly toward the Christian faith itself. But afterwards, learning that this was the error of the Apollinarist heretics, he rejoiced with the Catholic faith and was brought into harmony with it. And so, pressing on more eagerly with his good beginnings, he was doubtless meditating with Augustine upon the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle, when Pontitianus the African, unexpectedly coming upon them both — as distinguished in the palace as he was excellently Christian — congratulated them in astonishment that he had suddenly found those and only those Writings with them. And truly the hope which he conceived of them both from this circumstance he himself did not sluggishly advance on the spot, by adding much concerning St. Antony the abbot and his history, by whose unforeseen reading two courtiers near Trier, when the emperor was there, being suddenly moved, had preferred the roughness of the desert to the delights of the court, entering at once upon a new and holier warfare; as may be seen in Augustine, Confessions, book 8, chapter 6 and following: where also it is related that scarcely had Pontitianus departed thence when there straightway followed the conversion of Augustine and Alypius through a most brief and, as it were, chance inspection of those same Writings of the Apostle Paul.
[19] by the reading of the Apostle Paul's text: For both of them, going out into the garden from their meeting with Pontitianus, began to be agitated by such wonderful surgings of thought and feeling that Augustine, laying the codex of St. Paul down beside Alypius, withdrew a little way from thence, that he might indulge somewhat more freely in tears and groans. But presently, at those heavenly voices, Take up and read: take up and read, flying back to Alypius and the sacred codex, I seized it, he says, I opened it, and I read in silence the chapter upon which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences." Nor did I wish to read further, nor was there need. For instantly, with the end of this sentence, as though a light of security were poured into my heart, all the darkness of doubt fled away. Then, putting in my finger or some other mark I know not what, I closed the codex, and with a countenance now tranquil made it known to Alypius. And he in turn disclosed what was going on within himself (which I did not know) in this wise: he asked to see what I had read: I showed him; and he attended even beyond what I had read; and I did not know what followed. But there followed: "Now him that is weak in faith, receive." This he applied to himself, and disclosed it to me. But by such an admonition he was strengthened, and by a resolve and purpose good and most congruent with his own character, in which he had long since differed from me very greatly and far for the better, he was joined to me without any turbulent delay. This happened certainly, according to Augustine in the same work, book 9, chapter 2, about twenty days before the vintage or autumn holidays, and accordingly at the beginning of August. But of what year? It is disputed; some defending the year 387, others — whom we here prefer to follow — 386.
[20] Being thus animated, since they desired nothing more than to find somewhere, far from the noise and business of citizens, a tranquil leisure for meditation, thence together with him at the estate of Cassiciacum the kindness of a certain most friendly Verecundus fell out most opportunely for them, who of his own accord offered them for that purpose his country place and villa of Cassiciacum in the district of Milan. Augustine therefore, gladly using it with all his household (namely his mother Monica, his brother Navigius, his son Adeodatus, his disciples Trygetius and Licentius, his kinsmen Lastidianus and Rusticus, and above all the inseparable Alypius), found that retreat so suitable to himself that, bidding farewell to rhetoric, he sent word from thence, when the vintage holidays were over, that the Milanese should provide their scholars with another seller (so he himself speaks) of words; and at the same time wrote to St. Ambrose concerning his preparation for baptism: And I made known, he says in the same book 9, chapter 5, by letter to your prelate, that holy man Ambrose, my former errors and my present resolve, that he might advise me what above all I ought to read of your Books, whereby I might become more prepared and fitted for receiving so great a grace. From which words it becomes clear what he himself, and what Alypius, chiefly looked to in this retreat so holy, and why they kept themselves in it until the following Lent.
[21] There, then, Alypius acknowledged and cast out whatever he had before drunk in from the Academics contrary to Christian truth and certainty, being excellently prepared for baptism through some months, being overcome in a most delightful contest with Augustine; as he himself confesses (for Augustine has preserved the very words of Alypius in the work then written Against the Academics, book 3, chapter 20): There, if any vanity remained, to which either the humility of the ecclesiastical style in philosophical writings or the frequent employment of the most holy name of Jesus Christ was not sufficiently pleasing, it utterly erased it from my mind. We have Augustine as witness, writing thus of this time and place in Confessions, book 9, chapter 4: And when shall I have time enough to commemorate all your great benefits toward us at that time, especially as I hasten on to greater things? For my recollection calls me back, and it becomes sweet to me, O Lord, to confess to you with what goads you subdued me, and how you leveled me, humbling the mountains and hills of my thoughts,
and made straight my crooked places and smoothed my rough ones, and in what manner you subdued even Alypius himself, the brother of my heart, to the name of your only-begotten, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which at first he disdained to have inserted in our writings: for he wished them rather to be redolent of the cedars of the schools, which the Lord has now broken in pieces, than of the wholesome herbs of the Church, which are adverse to serpents. With what torches he there nourished his conceived love of God, the same Augustine indicates in this place: What voices did I raise to you, my God, when I read the Psalms, those faithful songs of David and sounds of piety which shut out the swollen spirit — I, a novice in genuine love of you, a catechumen keeping holiday in a country house with the catechumen Alypius? There Augustine so looked up to the exercises of his virtues above his own that he did not hesitate to affirm these things of them to his face, in book 2 On Order, chapter 10: These things you seized with so great an avidity, and entered upon them with so great an impulse of your admirable nature, that I have become to you a master of words, and you to me a master of things. And to what an unwonted hatred of himself the divine grace impelled that impulse in that same place, you will gather from Confessions, book 9, chapter 6, where it is thus set down:
[22] Thence, when the time came at which I had to give in my name (namely about Lent, he is baptized by St. Ambrose at Easter of the year 387. as has been said, in order to receive baptism at the next Easter), leaving the country, we returned to Milan. It pleased Alypius also to be born again in you along with me, being already clothed with a humility congruent with your Sacraments, and being a most valiant tamer of his body, to the point of treading with bare foot upon the icy Italian soil (the winter being now past) with an unaccustomed boldness. Hard rudiments indeed for a man born and bred in the heats of Africa! but worthy of so great a hero as he showed himself thereafter when he had returned into Africa. Moreover, that he was baptized by St. Ambrose is clear enough from this, that he was born again in Christ together with Augustine, of whom St. Possidius relates in the Life, chapter 1: And it came to pass, by the granting of divine help, that through that great and eminent prelate Ambrose he received both the saving doctrine of the Catholic Church and the divine Sacraments; although the same is also most certain from other sources, and indeed from his own testimony to St. Paulinus in letter 24 among the Augustinian letters, otherwise 35. The time also is drawn out from what has been said at number 19, namely the Easter of the year 387.
§ IV. The remaining things which are known of him.
[He presently began to establish a fellowship of the evangelical life with Augustine,] What St. Augustine did when he was now washed in the saving laver, Possidius thus explains in his Life, chapter 3, passing over certain other things interposed: And it pleased him, when he had received grace, to return to Africa and to his own house and lands with other citizens and friends of his who likewise served God. Coming to them and settled among them, for nearly three years, having now put from himself all secular cares, he lived to God with those who clung to him, in fastings, prayers, and good works, meditating in the Law of the Lord day and night. We think that this fellowship was in a manner begun by Augustine at his very baptism, from Alypius and with Alypius, at Milan; and therefore, when he speaks of the aggregation of others which soon followed, he expresses himself and Alypius, as gathering them together jointly, by the plural number; as when he mentions Adeodatus, Confessions, book 9, chapter 6: We associated him, he says, our coeval in your grace, to be brought up in your discipline. Although a premature death carried him off before the companions sailed to Africa. Not otherwise does it seem that we must understand what he adds in the same place, chapter 8, concerning another companion: You who make men of one mind dwell in a house, associated with US also Euodius, a young man of OUR OWN TOWN; who, while serving in the office of agens in rebus, was converted to you and baptized before US. We were together; being about to dwell together in our holy purpose, we sought what place might more usefully hold us serving you: together we were returning to Africa. Nay, that Alypius is comprehended in this passage is most certain from book 22 On the City of God, chapter 8; where Augustine relates that he, having recently landed at Carthage from Italy with Alypius, was present at the miracle which had then occurred there to his host Innocent, formerly advocate of the vicarian prefecture; for coming, he says, from beyond the sea, he himself had received me and my brother Alypius, not yet indeed clerics but already serving God, being as he was most religious with all his household, and we were then dwelling with the same, etc.
[24] and by his example constantly to draw many to it. Alypius therefore was joined with Augustine in the covenant of so holy a purpose in Italy from the year 387; thus he departed thence with him into Africa after the death of the tyrant Maximus (as is asserted in book 3 Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 25), that is, after the month of August of the year 388; thus he lodged at Carthage with him in a common lodging. And why should he not thereafter have gone with him to Tagaste, and there have lived with him for nearly three years in the manner already established in Italy? Certainly he had not yet ever departed from his fellowship in the year 391, at the beginning of which Augustine, being seized by the people of Hippo for the priesthood, erected among them a monastery of the same institute, and drew Alypius with him to it: for this Augustine himself indicates plainly enough in letter 22, otherwise 64, when he writes back thus in the year 392 to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, who had congratulated him upon it: That you have received most benevolently the news that brother Alypius HAS REMAINED in our fellowship, that he may be an example to the brethren who desire to shun the cares of this world, I give you thanks such as I could express in no words. May the Lord repay this into your soul. And so the whole company of brethren which has begun to grow together among us is bound to you by so great a prerogative that, though separated by places of the earth so far distant, you have taken counsel for us as though most present in spirit. Wherefore we apply ourselves to prayers as much as we are able, that the Lord may deign to sustain with you the flock committed to you, etc. Here you see in Alypius not only constancy in the kind of life and fellowship once undertaken, but moreover an eminent perfection, celebrated as far as Carthage.
[25] Scarcely had he bestowed such useful labor in the monastery of Hippo upon St. Augustine and the assembled brethren, He visits St. Jerome in the year 393: when at the impulse of the same he set out for the East to St. Jerome, in the year of Christ 393, as Baronius determines. For Augustine vehemently desired to go himself to so great and eminent a man and to see him face to face; but since he could not, being now a priest bound by the cares of the church of Hippo, he strove to fulfill his desire at least through that other part of himself which was still free — through Alypius, I mean. This is easily drawn from his letter 28, otherwise 8, given to Jerome after the return of Alypius, doubtless as soon as opportunity allowed; whose words we transcribe, because they are exceedingly honorable to our Saint: Although therefore, says Augustine, I altogether greatly desire to know you, yet I lack some small thing of you, namely the presence of your body: and that very presence, after our brother Alypius — now a most blessed bishop, but then already worthy of the episcopate — had seen you, and, returning, was seen by me, I cannot deny has been in great part impressed upon me by his relation of it: and before his return, when he was seeing you there, I too was seeing you, but with his eyes: for whoever knows him and me will say that we are two not in mind but in body — in concord, that is, and in a most faithful familiarity; not in merits, in which he surpasses me.
[26] But it is also evident from this same passage that the raising of St. Alypius to the see of Tagaste followed his return by no long interval; [whence, returning in the following year, he becomes bishop of Tagaste, and there founds a monastery for himself] since Augustine reports both matters together to Jerome in his next and first letter to him. He returned therefore perhaps in the same year in which he was made bishop, the year of Christ 394, to the autumn of which belongs the letter written in reply to Alypius as bishop by St. Paulinus, which we praised above at number 4. From it also we learn that he had already at that time founded a monastery at Tagaste, over which he would begin to watch himself as bishop, no otherwise than Augustine, still a priest, over that at Hippo: For although, says Paulinus there, you live among the peoples and over the people, ruling the sheep of the Lord's pasture, a watchful shepherd with anxious vigils; yet by renunciation of the world and rejection of flesh and blood, you have made yourself a desert, withdrawn from the many, called among the few. That this is to be understood of the monastery of Tagaste he shows by these words immediately preceding: By your holiness let there be greeted with our mutual services both the companions of your holiness in the clergy, and in the monasteries the emulators of your faith and virtue: and by those which follow toward the end of the letter: The blessed companions and emulators of your holiness, our brethren in the Lord (if they deign to be so), both in the churches and in the monasteries at Carthage, Tagaste, Hippo Regius … serving the Lord in Catholic fashion, we ask to be greeted with much affection and observance: for although several monasteries are commemorated where the emulators of the so celebrated holiness of Alypius then were, yet we judge that what is added — You have made yourself a desert — could at that time suit the Tagastan one alone.
[27] In the same letter, besides the anxious vigils of this shepherd and the examples of his lofty virtues, St. Paulinus commends also his altogether exceptional manner of discoursing upon divine things even by letter, which he governed together with his church most holily, and therefore he thus begs that these be sent frequently to himself and his Therasia: Visit us with your letters, and bring forth into the light that in which you yourself are conversant, conspicuous upon the golden candlesticks. Your utterances will be a light to our paths, and our head will be enriched with the oil of your lamp, and faith will be kindled, when by the breath of your mouth we shall have taken the food of the mind and the light of the soul. Under such a prelate, then, how flourishing must the state of the church of Tagaste continually have been? This certainly is intimated in the year 395 by this congratulation of Augustine, still a priest, written to bishop Alypius, in letter 29 of the most recent edition: In great part indeed we rest with you with the eagerness of fervor, because so frequent gifts of the spiritual church of the Tagastans are announced to us. And so little by little such became the aspect of the same church that it must have seemed a certain sacred delight of Africa to St. Melania the younger and to her mother and husband, when, having journeyed thither toward the end of the year 410, they fixed there a stay of fully seven years under the discipline of Alypius; how glorious to the shepherd, how useful to the church of Tagaste, the Life of St. Melania on the XXXI day of December will teach.
[28] most intent meanwhile everywhere upon the Catholic cause. But if the labor which he expended upon his own particular fold, while he presided over it, was so admirable and happy, far more admirable indeed must that be called which meanwhile he at the same time most constantly lent to the universal Church wherever she labored. But this most ample part of his praises
it is better to reserve for another place, to be unfolded according to its dignity, than to wrap it up here, touched upon only under the chief heads of the matter: for whatever great thing in this kind the most great Augustine ever accomplished, it is established that nearly the whole of it was undertaken by the counsel and promoted and completed by the help of his Alypius — not even excepting that victory over the Pelagians which brought so much glory everywhere to the name of Augustine: for this also both St. Jerome and the impious Julian, impatient of the defeat he had received, attribute to Alypius and Augustine together; the latter by repeatedly tearing them both to pieces with the most atrocious calumnies before Augustine himself in the Unfinished Work against Julian; the former by writing thus toward the end of the year 419 to both in one letter (which among the Augustinian ones is 102, otherwise 24): We give thanks to God that it has so fallen out that you have overcome our silence by your letters: for every occasion is most welcome to me by which I write to your reverence; calling God to witness that, if it could be done, I would take the wings of a dove and be wrapped in your embraces, always indeed for the merit of your virtues, but now especially because by you as fellow workers and authors the Caelestian heresy has been slain. And that this ardor of his for defending the Catholic cause most laboriously, by himself and by Augustine, against the heretics, by no means grew lukewarm down to about the year 429, St. Augustine himself is witness in the second letter which he then gave to Quodvultdeus.
[29] The time of his death is unknown, nor the place, nor the manner. But what befell Alypius after that year we do not know. There are those who not rashly hold that in the year 430 he fled to Hippo to St. Augustine, and there remained during the time of the siege with those of whom Possidius treats in chapter 28: Whither we ourselves also from the neighborhood had fled with other of our fellow bishops, and we were in the same city during the whole time of that siege. The matter, however, is not certain. But far more uncertain, and hitherto disclosed by no records, are the things which pertain to the glorious death of so great a man: the time at which he died is unknown, unknown the manner and the place: no notice survives of his burial, none of his tomb, much less of his body or relics; nay indeed, no evidences even of public cult (at least with us) older than those which we gave at the beginning of this Commentary. Therefore, in that we have set in the margin to St. Alypius, ABOUT THE YEAR CDXXX, understand it thus: that it is signified that nothing further has been ascertained concerning his deeds; although besides it is not even probable that a man more than seventy years old and broken by so many labors survived much longer.